Dominion's End

Volume 2, 6: City of Aberrants

Volume 2, Chapter 6: City of Aberrants

Translator: Elkin (proofread by Arcedemius & Trespasserby; C/E edited by lucathia)

I leaned against the utility pole, tipping the bloodstained evolution crystal in my hand into the hip flask. The palm-sized hip flask looked like it was made of silver, a beautifully wrought piece of art, and there was even the name “Feng” engraved on the bottom in ancient Chinese. I had no idea what possessed Jin Feng to put a small hip flask in my backpack. Did she want to give me some liquid courage?

Anyway, once I drained the alcohol inside in one gulp, the hip flask became the perfect container for holding evolution crystals. By now, the only use I had for these tierless crystals was for healing, so after popping back a few crystals to heal up, I saved up the rest to give the others when I returned.

But I really wasn’t planning on accumulating so many. I just wanted to get home ASAP!

Technically, if I could directly run home, I’d probably reach home after running non-stop for a day and a night. But I couldn’t travel in a straight line, and there were so many aberrants in the city that my skin crawled. Although I hadn’t yet run into more tier one aberrants, a bunch of tierless aberrants could still mob someone to death!

This was the third day after leaving Jin Feng’s. I really missed the days when someone would spoon feed me. Jiggling the hip flask caused the contents to rattle softly. It was a rich harvest, with crystals everywhere to be found in this city. This only made me warier of danger. Judging from the looks of things, I’d been extremely lucky to rise to tier one so early in the suburbs. There was just no comparing the dangers in the city to those found in the suburbs.

No, it was the Jiang family’s rotten luck that even made the city seem like heaven when compared to the suburbs. Just how many tier one aberrants have I encountered? I killed one myself. Then, there was the brainwight and the two birds, averaging one a month. What the hell? This isn’t some monthly cycle like a period, okay?

In my previous life, Guan Weijun had only seen her first tier one aberrant after spending a good six months on the run in the city, and she’d turned tail after seeing it in the distance.

I really didn’t know how to feel about this rotten luck. Although it had let me reach tier one even while living in the suburbs, it had also separated me from Dàg? and Shujun… Sigh, whatever. I just needed to get back to them. Come to think of it, I also need to fill in the shoes of the Ice Emperor, so it’s not like I can slack off. All right, be as rotten as you want!

Tucking away the hip flask, I pulled out the map to check that I was headed in the right direction. Although I was going to make it out of Zhongguan City soon, it was dark and conditions weren’t great for travel. After assessing the various factors, I had no choice but to put aside my impatience in wanting to see Dàg? and Xiaomèi as soon as possible. All right, I’ll hole up for the night, and aim to get home before tomorrow night so I can enjoy dinner with my family.

I found myself a residential building. I’d already reached the outskirts of the city, and high-rise buildings were now few and far between, unlike the CBD, the central business district. The majority of the residential buildings were less than ten stories tall, but it didn’t mean fewer aberrants compared to downtown. Probably because the black fog had struck at midnight, most people had returned home, so there were actually fewer people in the CBD than in the outskirts of the city.

This was also why my progress was slowing down. I had to be extra cautious every time I moved into a new block of buildings. More often than not, I’d intrude into some aberrant’s territory and be forced into combat, and once my special powers dropped past a certain level, I’d be forced to find somewhere to hole up to avoid being found by aberrants. Otherwise, I’d be at a disadvantage instead.

I picked out a shabby-looking residential building that was three stories tall and entered after verifying that it was empty. Then, I selected the master bedroom on the second floor, since two of the walls had windows. This ensured that I had an accessible escape route through the windows at any time. I lay down in the closet and closed the closet doors, but left a gap so I could see what was going on outside.

Although it was just eight or nine in the evening, after gulping down some dry rations and water, I yanked down some clothes dangling over me, rested my head against them, and prepared to sleep. I’d set off for home the moment the sun rose the next day.

Dàg?, Shujun, I miss you guys so much. I’ll never be confused anymore—things like past lives and current lives don’t matter! It doesn’t change the fact that I am Jiang Shuyu. I’m your dìdi and èrg?!

Just as I was about to doze off, I caught a soft murmur of voices and immediately woke up. It was hardly unusual—I’d already run into people quite a number of times, but I’d been stealthily avoiding them as I had no intention of mingling with them.

Although the city was very dangerous, people always managed to survive. It seemed like the survival rate was even higher than in the suburbs, probably because most people living in cities either lived alone or had very small families. If anything, the most immediate danger at the beginning was people around you turning into aberrants, so it was very easy for entire families to get wiped out in the suburbs, where people lived with their family. In contrast, more people survived the first day in the city, but this was balanced by an equally high mortality rate later on.

After listening for a while, I realized those voices had entered the building. I frowned. I’d checked out this house when I had entered just now, and there was definitely no one living here.

Did they just happen to pick the same resting spot? What a pain!

Honestly speaking, I’d already picked this place and it was late, so I really didn’t want to leave on my own volition. But the voices suggested that there were quite a lot of people, so it was probably easier if I just found myself a new place instead.

I opened the closet, and just as I was about to jump out of the window, with one foot even set on the window frame, I heard a yell from below.

Did something happen? I hesitated for a moment before deciding to bail out through the window anyway. I could hardly afford to be a saint in this day and age.

“Mommy!”

“…” I was holding onto the window frame, and all I had to do was step off. But the owner of the child’s voice was probably younger than ten? It was quite something to be able to survive until now, so his mother must have gone through a lot.

Mom…

I gritted my teeth, turned back, and dashed downstairs. I paused outside the stairwell to take in the situation. It was a motley crowd of less than twenty people. There were elderly, young, and women, headed by seven to eight men wielding guns. But the men didn’t dare to shoot, probably because they were worried about attracting more aberrants, so they were slamming the aberrants with sticks, clubs, and even vegetable knives.

It was a familiar sight.

Five aberrants had entered the house. They were an unusual shape that was hard to describe, resembling aliens that had the stuffing beat out of them by the main characters in alien movies I’d watched before. One was particularly large, a person and a half tall. None of the vegetable knives could put a scratch on him, and this was the one that everyone was terrified of.

“Take the others upstairs!” one of the men yelled behind him.

“We can’t. We still haven’t checked upst… Huh?” Another man turned to see me standing there. He froze, his eyes wide in shock. Thankfully, he had a lot of comrades next to him to hold off the aberrant.

I didn’t bother talking and drew out a knife. I wove past the crowds and even past the closer aberrants, gunning straight for the largest aberrant at the back. My opponent’s hands had mutated into the shape of sickles, and his body was encased by a layer of shell. The shell looked hard to damage, so the aberrant fearlessly swung one scythe at me. But I dodged lightly and slipped the knife into an elbow joint. Freezing energy surged into the knife.

The aberrant had obviously never been attacked by special abilities and didn’t know how to react. He even tried to swat away the knife with his other arm, but the knife was buried to the hilt in his joint and was even frozen along its entire length. Hitting the knife made him howl in agony, a bizarre sound similar to the static of a broken radio.

Seeing as he had so kindly opened his mouth, I quickly drew out another knife. First, I grabbed onto his lower jaw. Then, I stabbed the knife into his mouth, even twirling it a few times before yanking it out. Immediately after, I drove it into his eye.

His eyes seemed to be covered by a transparent, hard membrane, as the knife encountered a slight resistance as it stabbed in, accompanied by the soft pop of the surface breaking. However, it wasn’t enough to block my attack. The knife still managed to journey through the socket and mush up his brain.

There were still four left. I turned back to look at the remaining aberrants, debating whether or not I should leave the men to deal with them. This was a good chance for them to gain battle experience, and it gave me a reason not to take the evolution crystals of those four aberrants. But the four aberrants saw the changing tide of battle and fled, giving the men no chance to fight.

The aberrants in the city had evolved much faster than their suburban counterparts. They would flee the moment they saw that they were at a disadvantage, unlike those ones in the suburbs with the fearlessness of the ignorant and would keep coming at you until they were wiped out. My first reaction at seeing them flee was to freeze in surprise, before I remembered it had been the same in my previous life.

I dissected the scythe aberrant with my knife. Although it hadn’t reached tier one yet, this aberrant was obviously much stronger than the others, so its crystal should be fairly decent. I couldn’t pass up on it.

The silence behind me was almost deafening.

“W-what are you doing?” a man asked shakily. Going by his voice, he was still quite young, probably around the same age as me.

I ignored him, continuing to disembowel the corpse and extract the crystal. I purposely lifted the crystal to give it a look over before tucking it into my pocket. As a precaution, however, I hadn’t put it directly into my hip flask.

So, what now?

I frowned, finally electing to turn to look at the crowd. They collectively sucked in a breath before relaxing the next moment.

“He’s just a boy?” Everyone was bamboozled and just stared at me blankly.

I looked over all the people with a flat expression, trying to adopt a cold demeanor, and said, “I’m sleeping upstairs. No one is to come up.”

I was just watching over these people for one night. That was it. Actually, I should have left after taking the crystal, but there were elderly and young in this crowd. Clearly, this was a collection of a few households which had somehow gotten their hands on guns. None of them really knew how to use the guns, either, so I couldn’t bring myself to just abandon them like that.

I stalked past them, planning to head upstairs and avoid interacting with these people.

“Wait, did you use some kind of strange power just now?” someone yelled, the voice marking him as the very same person who had been asking me what I’d been doing a moment ago.

I watched him out of the corner of my eye. As I’d suspected, he looked to be around eighteen or nineteen. He was a bit taller than me and had the tanned skin of an athlete. With his good looks, he looked extremely sunny and easy-going, the type of guy that made a favorable impression on first sight.

But I ignored him. When I reached the stairs, a woman suddenly rushed forward to block my way, a child clutched in her arms. She begged, “Take my child with you! Please, she’s a good girl. She won’t disturb you!”

The girl was around seven or eight years old, and she was looking at her mom in fear and confusion. I narrowed my eyes and said coldly, “Only you are willing to protect your own kid.”

I didn’t mind taking a child upstairs with me, if it were just the one. But there were five or six children of all ages, and even a teenager who was around fifteen or so—did he count as a child as well? If I took all of them with me, I might as well sleep on the first floor. But there was no way I was doing that.

This woman already wants to slap herself for being so stupid as to stay behind. Whyyyyyy are you acting like Mother Teresa?!

We couldn’t absorb these people into our group. There were almost twenty of them, but only seven young men, and this was counting that eighteen year-old Sunny Boy. The women were all the timid type who froze up—the better ones among them were the mothers who would hug their children, but they were still huddled to one side, motionless.

By this stage, even Guan Weijun could wield a stick to bash things, ready to drag away her impulsive boyfriend at any moment.

The more pitiful they are, the more reason I can’t take them with me! Best snatch some sleep upstairs, then immediately set off the moment there’s daylight.

I wanted to dash upstairs, but the person in my way wouldn’t let me go.

“Please,” the mother sobbed as tears flowed down her face, “it’s too dangerous down here. Please save my daughter, please!”

I clenched my hand into a fist and ordered coldly, “Get lost!”

“How can you be so heartless?” Sunny Boy said angrily, “She’s just a little girl. What’s the big deal with having her sleep next to you?”

Because I won’t be able to sleep! Because I won’t be able to run! Because…

I gripped my hands into a fist again and whipped out a knife into a backhand grip, shouting, “Get lost!”

The woman was so terrified that she fled to a corner, clinging onto her daughter all the while.

I climbed the stairs.

Sunny Boy wanted to storm over in rage, but he was grabbed by another woman. The woman looked like she was about to burst into tears, probably his mother going by her age, and for some reason, she looked quite familiar. Have I met her in my past life? Or is she someone Jiang Shuyu knows?

“There’s so few of us now, and the whole city’s full of monsters, but you won’t even help out? So what, are you planning to let mankind go extinct and live by yourself with the monsters?”

The others tried to talk some sense into him. “Chen Yishao, enough already!”

Someone even apologized to me, “Young people are impatient by nature, so please don’t take it to heart. Just ignore him and go upstairs if you want to. No one will dare to get in your way again!”

Their words were polite and courteous, but couldn’t hide the undercurrents of anxiety and terror. In their eyes, I was probably only slightly better than the aberrants, because at least I wasn’t likely to start snacking on them.

I headed upstairs with heavy steps and once again settled in the closet, but sleep wouldn’t come. Those people downstairs were all too familiar. In my previous life, I had probably been in the same situation as them, I guess? Except, I had fared somewhat better than those women. With a boyfriend who kept charging headfirst into death, it was impossible not to become a strong woman.

If there had been someone strong who’d been willing to help, like one of the powerhouses… So what? I had still managed to survive ten years in the apocalypse even without the support of a powerhouse. Even if we had had one to rely on, does that necessarily mean that Xia Zhengu would’ve remained faithful to me? What’s more, that guy always wanted to get stronger. So if we ever got taken under the wing of a powerhouse, he’d keep competing with them with all his might, and if he couldn’t beat that person, he’d probably do something drastic and probably worsen the situation.

After sorting things out in my head, I thought I’d be able to sleep, but I still ended up tossing and turning restlessly. I had to admit, I was being soft-hearted. In the past, I hadn’t had the ability to even guarantee my own safety, so there was simply no way I could’ve helped anyone else back then. That meant that I hadn’t had to feel responsible for others. But now, even though I was capable enough, I was choosing to turn my back on them. Just thinking about that mother, pleading and begging for her daughter, made my heart sink.

I knew I should’ve just jumped out of the window… No, wait, if I didn’t go downstairs and just left through the window, I might regret it even more.

I felt bad either way—Xiao Qi had been right when she said I had saint-like tendencies.

“Who does this kind of stuff? Not only do you get along with his mistresses, you even help them out?” Xiao Qi demanded huffily, “Tell me, did you give food to those abandoned mistresses again yesterday?”

I responded like it was the most natural thing in the world, “It’s because I stopped caring about Xia Zhengu a long time ago. Besides, he’s taken in so many women. Won’t I get tired if I have to hate every single one of them? Anyway, that was just some leftover food.”

Xiao Qi gave me a skeptical look in response.

We really had lots of food, but for some reason, Xiao Qi’s expression made me feel a little guilty and I quickly added, “I didn’t give anything to those women who made trouble for me. Just the girls—they’re still so young. How can they survive without relying on a powerhouse? Can you really blame them?”

“All right already, what’re you getting so worked up for? I’m just worried about you,” she replied in a defeated tone of voice. “I mean, I’m an abandoned mistress you helped out, too. I’m hardly in the position to tell you not to help others.”

“Don’t say that. You’ve helped me out a lot, too. If it weren’t for you, those mistresses would probably have walked all over me many times over…”

Waking from my memories, I realized that Guan Weijun hadn’t been utterly uncharitable, either. Back then, once we had found somewhere to settle down, fear of starvation had driven me to start raising this and that, and I had grown all kinds of plants. Because I was able to cultivate lots of edible stuff, I’d been able to retain the “girlfriend” throne. It hadn’t amounted to much, though, and I had always been the target of the mistresses’ attacks, but at least I would never have been kicked out.

Back then, I’d been Xia Zhengu’s girlfriend in name only for quite some time, so I empathized with the mistresses as I watched them being abandoned, one after the other. That was the only reason I’d send them some food to help them out a little every so often.

After spacing out a little in the closet, I made up my mind and headed downstairs. The elderly and the children couldn’t stay up anymore and were sleeping together, while the women clung onto their children tightly, watching the windows and doors in terror. Tension made the men as taut as drawn bows, and every little thing sent them jolting in the air. Even if they did manage to sleep, it was shallow. Every one of them had such dark shadows under their eyes, it was like they’d been punched in the face.

Chen Yishao was the first to notice me, and he warily growled, “What do you want?”

I tipped out a crystal from the hip flask onto my hand and held it out for them to see, and explained without any prompting, “These are evolution crystals. You can dig them out from the aberrants’ chests. Eating them will strengthen your body and boost your special powers, and they can even heal injuries.”

I looked around at everyone and walked toward Chen Yishao. I held up the crystal in my palm and told him, “Eat it.”

Chen Yishao took a few steps back, hesitating somewhat, and he didn’t dare to reach out his hand.

I frowned. Did I pick the wrong person? I’d originally thought that this youngster was the impulsive type, not to mention most people his age had read a lot of stories, so they were more willing to accept things like special powers and evolution and stuff. So in theory, he should be the most willing to eat the crystal.

As long as there was just one person who took the plunge and didn’t die from eating the crystal, most of the others would follow suit. Not to mention I’d demonstrated my capabilities. There was no need to drug people like them, and more importantly, these crystals were a beacon of hope in these hopeless apocalyptic days of fleeing and hiding.

Chen Yishao continued to waver. I frowned, wondering if I should continue pressuring him or find someone else, but in that moment, a figure dashed forward. I sidestepped, and only when I was sure of who it was did I stop moving. It was a woman, and she was clutching a child. She snatched the crystal with one hand and fed it to her child.

As she fed the child, I spotted the redness that had infused the child’s cheeks. It was obvious the child was burning with fever, and after eating the crystal, the child didn’t show much change. The mother couldn’t hold back anymore and burst into tears. A man walked to her side and watched the mother and child mournfully—he was probably her husband.

I stepped forward to check the child’s condition—unharmed—and consoled her, “Don’t worry. He should be developing his special abilities. Keep giving him more water and food, and he’ll recover.”

Actually, after experiencing the black fog, the human body had become more resilient, and hardly anyone died from illnesses anymore. If they weren’t killed, they’d become infected after getting injured and turn into aberrants. This was particularly the case for children like him—children seemed weak, but in actual fact, their recovery ability was much better than an adult’s. After a few years’ time, an adult might not even win against a child in a fight—those will be the days when everything we know will be turned on its head.

I took out another crystal and held it to the woman’s mouth.

She hesitated and turned to look at her husband, saying, “Give it to my husband.”

“One per person.”

Hearing that, the woman reached out, wanting to take the crystal. But the look on her face gave her away—she was probably going to sneak it to her husband for him to have it.

I moved my hand to the husband’s mouth and said coldly, “One per person. Eat it now. But you don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to.”

The husband froze but still didn’t dare to take it. I moved my hand away after three seconds. It was only because he was the first person that I’d waited that long—the others would be lucky if they even got a second to decide.

I moved the crystal back to the woman’s mouth again. Her eyes widened, but just as I was about to move away, she swallowed the crystal in one gulp, drawing her husband’s anxious glare. But he glanced at me and kept his silence.

After that, I offered crystals to every single person. Some ate and some didn’t, and unexpectedly, Chen Yishao came up to me himself, asking for one. He gave me a smile with his brilliant, white teeth, and even commented, “I believe you’re a good person.”

You think I care? I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, maintaining my cold, haughty expression, but still, I handed him a crystal.

After that, some of those who had abstained started to come up to me as well, having seen him ask for a crystal and that the others seemed fine even after eating. But I withdrew my hand and said tonelessly, “No more.”

Of course, I still had crystals, and I’d kept the crystal from the largest aberrant just now as well. But I didn’t feel like giving out any more. So what? Bite me.

Chen Yishao swallowed the crystal, and after a few seconds, he said with suspicion written all over his face, “Doesn’t seem like anything’s changed.”

“One or two crystals won’t change much. At most, your body will improve a little. You will need to continue eating them.”

Chen Yishao nodded, speaking in a tone of dawning comprehension, “So it’s like the skills and levels of characters in games, right? They’re only useful once they’ve leveled up?”

As expected of youngsters, they could even apply games as examples. I nodded and, seeing that he was able to accept this, added, “And like in a game, you need to start getting better crystals the more you eat. In the future, the aberrants will grow stronger as well, and their crystals will improve, too.”

I’d intended to give them a tip, but to my surprise, what caught these people’s attention was something else, and commotion rippled through the crowd.

“Those monsters will become stronger?”

“Oh god, what has this world come to?”

People started panicking, the men paled in fright, and the women even started weeping.

I watched them, feeling both annoyed and sympathetic. Back when it had all started, I wasn’t much better than them. I wanted to just turn and leave them to their fates, but my words had caused the commotion and terror. If I left just like that, I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror.

Just when I was about to explain that humans would also become stronger, Chen Yishao spoke up ahead of me, “So we’ll become stronger as well?”

I gave a small smile. “As long as you survive, you’ll become strong!”

Chen Yishao’s eyes lit up—he was much livelier than the others, and when I looked at him, I was reminded of… Xia Zhengu.

He too had reacted in a similar way at the beginning of the apocalypse. Although he wasn’t immune to the fear at the changes running through the world, he didn’t despair. When he discovered he had special powers, he even started obsessing about getting stronger. If he didn’t think it was stupid, he would’ve probably yelled out stuff like, “I want to be the first person to conquer the world!”

My mood suddenly took the turn for the worse.

“What are those ‘special powers’ you mentioned?” Chen Yishao asked excitedly.

This guy is Chen Yishao, not Xia Zhengu! I buried those useless memories and held out my hand, palm facing up. An oval, clear marble formed there and started sprouting like it was a seed. The sprouts grew upwards into branches, and finally, formed a transparent, crystal tree that stood about thirty centimeters tall.

“Beautiful,” Chen Yishao breathed in admiration.

Everyone’s eyes were wide open, most of them in awe but without too much surprise. Quite a few of them had probably discovered their own special abilities but hadn’t been able to use them much. At most, they could probably only use them for a mouthful of water or lighting fires; or worse, they were even more useless than a lighter.

I stressed, “Everyone has special powers, and some of them can be all kinds of weird and strange. The harder it is to discover the power, the more useful it is, so don’t worry.”

The guilt weighing down on my mind lightened significantly once I said those words. These people were far luckier than I had been in my past life. Guan Weijun not only had to train in actual combat while trying to figure out how to use her enhanced vision, she had only discovered the existence of evolution crystals after crushing an aberrant’s chest while fighting for her life.

“Oh!” The woman clinging onto her child suddenly exclaimed, “He’s awake! He’s awake! My boy’s awake!”

I looked at the child. The redness had faded from his cheeks, so as expected, he was fine. Developing special powers had probably taken too much out of him, so he immediately recovered once he had the crystal to boost his health.

But the fact that this special ability drained much stamina meant that it was probably quite a good one.

I was tempted to take the child with me, but both his parents were still present, which meant that I’d have to take the family of three. It was hard to say whether the parents would be willing to leave the group and join a lone wolf like me. On top of that, there were so many people here, so there was no way I was declaring for all to hear about how I had a mercenary troop, weapons, and a basement full of resources.

It’s too much of a pain, so forget it!

But if the child could become one of the powerhouses, it would be a good thing for humanity. I took out a few pieces of chocolate from my backpack, broke off a corner, and shoved it into the child’s mouth. The remainder was thrown to the man standing next to him, to dispel any mistaken notions he may have about me favoring his wife too much.

Then, I turned on my heel and walked out through the door.

“Wait, where—?”

Chen Yishao’s voice called out from behind me, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t dare to stop, and even if it was a dangerous time of night, I had to go. If I hung around any longer, I’d really turn into Mother Teresa.

It wasn’t a big deal, being the saint in my previous life. At most, I’d been backstabbed by my ex-boyfriend, shoved into a bunch of aberrants and turned into a pile of mince. But now, I had a dàg?, a xiaomèi, an uncle, an auntie, and Dàg?’s mercenaries. With so many people that mattered, there was no way I could afford to be a saint.

I suddenly spun around and dodged to one side. Almost simultaneously, a gunshot rang out.

I gave that person an icy glare.

“W-why are you shooting?” Chen Yishao stared in utter disbelief at one of the men in his group.

The man held up the gun in both hands, trembling a little. Although he was a little flustered at first, he gritted his teeth and said, “He’s got food—look at that big backpack of his. It’s probably full of stuff to eat! A-and those crystals, he’s gotta still got more. Get him to leave the stuff behind.”

Chen Yishao said incredulously, “What are you talking about?”

He was astonished, but not everyone else reacted the same way. Quite a few of them even started acting suspiciously.

When I saw that, I smiled. And when they saw my smile, everyone showed dazed looks of amazement, regardless of gender. Jiang Shuyu’s face was forever awesome. Even though I’d been parading all this time with a haughty, cold expression, it couldn’t even hold a candle to the power of a smile.

“You can’t win against an aberrant, but you dare to raise a hand against me. Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten who killed that aberrant?”

You guys can’t even handle aberrants, but you have the guts to kill your own kind?! As expected, I really can’t afford to be a saint. If I’d taken these people back, they’d definitely make trouble for the mercenary troop, and I’ll never be able to forgive myself!

The shooter’s expression suddenly became ruthless, and his hand stopped shaking. I watched him quietly. He obviously hadn’t reached the stage where his morals were completely gone, and he still wore an expression of guilt and agony. But none of this stopped him from shooting at me.

I clenched my right hand, and the originally empty palm was now wrapped around the hilt of a small ice knife. Then, I flung my hand. The knife flew straight and true, stabbing right into his heart. His eyes bulged, and he lowered his head, seeming to want to see what it was, but that motion turned into a full collapse.

No one knew how to react. If anything, they seemed puzzled as to why this person had suddenly fallen over.

“Don’t scream,” I warned them in a bland tone of voice. “That guy’s gunshot was pretty loud. If you guys start screaming on top of it, then you’ll really draw the aberrants’ attention, and you’ll be dead meat.”

That Chen Yishao knelt down and tapped at the guy. When he realized something was wrong, he flipped him over and was stunned by the sight of the small cylinder of ice protruding from his chest. Although I described these impromptu ice knives as “knives,” they weren’t much more than ice shards that were vaguely knife-shaped, with the hilt being thicker than the blade so I had somewhere I could hold it. It wasn’t like I was planning on displaying them at an ice sculpture exhibition.

Everyone sucked in sharp breaths when they saw it, but thankfully, no one screamed. We were four months into the apocalypse, so people were no longer strangers to death.

Shocked, Chen Yishao looked up at me in confusion and asked in bewilderment, “W-why’d you go and kill him?”

Because he wanted to kill me! Isn’t that obvious enough?

“In the future, you’ll thank me for killing him.”

This man was willing to kill me for food, so you think he won’t kill others as well? How many he would actually manage to kill was anyone’s guess, but people like him somehow always managed to survive while stepping on others’ corpses. The apocalypse is always full of backstabbers like him, so the fewer the better!

“Never!” Chen Yishao glared at me.

This kid really has the Mother Teresa-like qualities of my previous life. Oh, wait, he’s a guy. What should I call him? Father Terence? Unfortunately, the people who died the quickest in the apocalypse were the saints. Guan Weijun’s luck had been pretty incredible for her to last out ten years in the apocalypse.

I couldn’t be bothered to wrangle with him any longer. I was already standing at the door anyway, so I just turned and left.

“Stop!” Chen Yishao was so frantic that he was almost hopping on the spot. “You’re planning to just run after killing someone?”

I looked back and rolled my eyes at him. “Then, report me to the police.”

After that, I left this group of people without a shred of hesitation. Thanks to that one gunshot, my unneeded heart of a saint had been shattered to pieces. I could finally get out of there without feeling a shred of guilt. I’d go home and whine about it to my dàg? and xiaomèi, and I might even get a comforting pat on my head!

I’m going home!